Google '99.9%' certain to pull China search plug Google is now "99.9 per cent" certain it will shut down its Chinese search engine, according to a report citing "a person familiar with the company's thinking". The Financial Times reports that the web giant has drawn up detailed plans for closing Google.cn, saying the company's discussions with Chinese authorities reached an …
the chinese have been abusing human rights? locking up dissidents? when did this happen? its not the whole world told us before we started doing business with them. oh well one day when we can pull out without destroying the stock price we might pull out of the chinese market. see we are real peace loving freedom loving hippie types honest!
Wow, that's even more tenuous than "sources close to" or "an unnamed friend"!
I'm familiar with China's thinking and predict that if this happens, they will stick two fingers up at Google and promote the state-sponsored Baidu search engine instead. They've really got nothing to lose by kicking Google out. Google have everything to lose. Google are probably squirming in embarrassment trying to think of ANY possible way they can gloss over this and continue in the profitable Chinese market.
...or maybe just "maybe"? Didn't the folks in MV announce back in January that they are likely to pull the plug? And what happened? Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Zip. Nichts.
The Chinese government does not care one yota about Google. Some Chinese may care abotu Google, but not enough to put pressure on the government. So, what's exactly the point of threatening again and again and again?
Please do pull out of China now, and stop the meaningless PR about this.
'They are taking a stand'...
No they're not. 'Taking a stand' implies some kind of moral principle behind the action. They are hypocrites - they talked about 'doing no evil' and being against censorship, but when it came down to it, they cosied up to the Chinese government for the sake of the dollar.
Any they are not alone. Every other company that takes the dollar over it's stated principles is exactly the same.
Google are by no means the only hypocrites, but lets not kid ourselves with the 'taking a stand' bullshit.
They are going to shutter google.cn, and close the China offices, but that is not pulling out of China? How does that work?
"They are hypocrites - they talked about 'doing no evil' and being against censorship, but when it came down to it, they cosied up to the Chinese government for the sake of the dollar."
Google is a collective entity -- they DID cosy up (with a perhaps weak argument that they were censoring LESS than the other search engines...), but were (from what I've heard) arguing about it within the company the whole time; and you have to admit, it sounds like they are in fact going to leave despite the dollars they were making (they didn't have a majority of the search engine business there by any means, but still had a decent percentage.)
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